“Veterans’ healthcare is the moral responsibility of the American people. But under Mitt Romney’s disastrous proposal, America’s veterans, who have risked their lives to protect our country, would be left to fend for themselves on the open insurance market.

“Tennesseans believe in honoring our commitments—especially to our veterans. That means ensuring proper treatment and care for all our former service men and women—a commitment that every American president has honored since the VA Department was founded in 1930.

“A voucher is a coupon, not a commitment. These brave men and women volunteered to put on the uniform and fight for our country. They shouldn’t have to fight a privatized system for their healthcare the rest of their lives.

“Tennessee veterans deserve better. Unsurprisingly, this is the same Mitt Romney who wants to turn Medicare into a voucher program, who wants to let homeowners hit rock bottom, and who made a fortune breaking up American companies and shipping jobs overseas.”

Background:

Romney: Give vouchers to U.S. veterans:

“Meeting with about a dozen veterans in South Carolina, GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney suggested privatizing the healthcare system of military veterans… “If you’re the government, they know there’s nowhere else you guys can go, you’re stuck,” Romney told the veterans. “Sometimes you wonder if there would be some way to introduce private sector competition, somebody else who could come in and say each solder has ‘X’ thousand dollars attributed to them and then they can choose where they want to go in the government system or the private system with the money that follows them. Like what happens with schools in Florida where people have a voucher that goes with him.” [UPI, 11/11/11]